plenty of food and drink and cake. >> thank you so much. thank you for that wonderful -- it was fun. thank you. [inaudible conversations] ..

>> and his decision later in life to stop hunt being create sanctuaries for animals toly and be studied -- live and be studied. this is just over 45 minutes. >> hello and good evening. thank you so much for being here, and thank you, claire fleming, for that wonderful introduction. excuse me wheel i -- excuse me while i -- i can't tell you how grateful i am to be here tonight at the academy of natural sciences and to see so many friendly face. it's, it's -- thank you so much for coming out tonight. i just can't believe it. i also want assure any of you who might still be wondering, no, there not be an actual taxer

themy demonstration in tonight's program. apologies to any of you who were expecting -- came for anything like that. but i do, however, want to begin by telling you all a story that took place 100 year ago at the top of mount kenya. it was here in june 1910 that my friend, carl akeley, found himself tracking a creature that would forever change his life. he was with a small party of of kikuyu porters just a thousand or so feet beneath the glacier in the upper reaches of the bamboo belt. the elevation was high enough that his hands were numb, and he could barely hold his rifle. by this point i should say carl akeley, the explorer and taxi

determineist, had already achieved a level of fame for having stuffed p.t. barnum easel pant -- elephant. he was even more famoused for having revolutionized the art of taxier themy, for infusing in it, too, with an air of sorcery and creating those great illusions of nature frozen in a box. by now, though, he had already been in africa going on a year, and he was having a hard time finding a male elephant large enough for the group. he had planned that for the american museum of natural history in new york city. he'd already collected a couple of females and a young calf shot by his friend, teddy roosevelt, who had come to africa at carl's urging. but carl had yet to find the really big bull he sought. he had scoured half of africa by

the point trying to find his perfect specimen, and he had failed over and over and over again. he had grown so frustrated, some might say obsessed, no, let's go all the way and just say obsessed, that his hunt had begun to resemble ahab's pursuit of moby dick. finally, he decided to go up mount kenya, the second highest peak in africa, where he'd heard legends of tusks so old that saplings grew from their back sides, and where, in fact, his wife and partner in crime had previously bagged the biggest elephant bull only five years earlier which is now on display in the lobby of the chicago field museum. but by now carl and nicky's marriage was somewhat strained, and carl had left mickey behind

at base camp with the rest of their safari party. this is mickey having kind of a classic safari-tile breakfast. that's her in the back, and that little critter on her lap is j.t. jr., being her pet monkey devil who would eventually confirm at least for me lord byron's great statement about truth being stranger than fiction. more on that later. anyway, back on mount kenya. carl had found spoor higher than he ever would have guessed, above the timber line at 14,000 feet, and a little higher in the stagnant marshes where the air was thin as plasma. but right now in the upper bamboo forest as he was creeping along on an ancient and claustrophobic elephant trail, he realized he was now tracking

what was very well the biggest bull elephant he had ever come across. but he had also begun to realize to his trembling consternation that at the same time he himself was being hunted by the bull. the trail itself was a kind of maze, a series of interconnected passageways blazed over time that traversed the elephants' feeding grounds high in the mountain forest. and deep in the maze, though, as carl, as carl tried to follow the bull's tracks, he only ended by circling back around to the same place from which he'd started, almost as if he'd been set a ruse. finally, trying to find the exit to the maze, carl was going along the bamboo perimeter when he found a massive pile of dung still steaming in the freezing june mist. i'm going to read to you from a passage from my book.

i realized i left it in my little at a they down here, so let me pull it out. all right. it was then he began to have a distinct sense about this elephant. it came over him gradually. the feeling was he had finally found a bull worthy of bringing back to new york. the one he had been chasing after for the last long, difficult year, asif it had only been one individual bull all along that had evaded him and set up this contest. but by now he felt it, that this was the one. even stranger, as carl and the trackers kept walking through the maze, he started getting the sense that the elephant truly was waiting for him. the feeling was strong, that he was being hunted as well and was now engaged in a mortal contest with this bull. in fact, he felt it right up until the moment where they came to a small clearing and heard a

loud crash in the woods 50 yards straight ahead. the trackers were already 20 yards forward on the path and now braced against the unknown. the porters behind him had run off shedding their bundles. carl calling for his 475 double rifle while his gun bearer went through the patient ritual of taking out and holding up for carl's inspection every single bull let from the band leer. the last thing he needed at a critical moment like this was to load the wrong caliber. meanwhile, he unwrapped the handkerchief from his happened and waiting for the trackers to give him a sight line when, with no more fanfare than a dust mote entering the victorian drawing room on a ray of mid afternoon sunlight, the bull was suddenly upon him. out of nowhere, a tusk was at his chest. as if elephant had only been

standing there, hidden behind the bamboo curtain, waiting for his cue to enter. what he remembered now was that the safety on his rifle had caught, though later his porters would remember he got off one shot. he did not remember that splintering of wood or explosion or leaves or whether he got a shot off or not. what he did remember was the awed, overwhelming sensation of home sickness, struggling a moment with the safety, and then he had done the unimaginable. he had thrown the rifle aside and actually reached out to grab hold of the tusk as it lanced past him with the force of a sharpened swinging log. a completely mad thing to do, to climb aboard a charging elephant as if it were a speeding boxcar. it had been almost automatic, like something he had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times before. lifted off his feet, lurched skyward, somehow in the next pretty second managing to get

himself between the two tusks, grabbing the other as well so he had a grip on both like the handlebars of a bicycle. here he was now riding the face of this giant bull, a massive overlord of the forest, pressed against the thick bridge of its trunk, close enough to see his own terrified, jiggling reflection in the piggish gelatin of its cornea. he knew to expect no mercy. attempting to scrape the gymnast off its face, the elephant thrust its tusks into the earth. it plowed him into the ground. thanks to a thwarting, stubborn undersoil -- a root, a rock -- carl is not killed instantly but remains between the tusks holding on for bitter life. as the elephant changed its footing, carl felt the chilled

breeze of its nicked bat wing ears and took one last breath of the animal's musk. the smell of hot cool tar, then a -- coal tar, then a shuddering blackness. ten hours later his runners would arrive at base camp to bring mickey the bad news. when his wife, mickey, found him after leading a wholly insane and terrifying and at times hard to believe midnight rescue herself, she just found this bloody, mangled heap covered in bloody ants, and she feared that her husband was dead for sure. the elephant has crushed his chest, broken several ribs, more or less crudely scammed him and ripped occupy his right cheek so that it exposed his teeth in this horrible grimace. amazingly, he survives. even more surprising, perhaps,

was the fact that instead of calling it quits and going back to america to a nice cozy hospital bed with clean bed sheets and running water, he would spend the next three months in his tent while mickey ministered to him, changing his bandages, helping him to eat and all the while continuing to manage their safari of some 50 porters, gun -- 150 porters, gun bearers, cooks, skinners all on hold while akeley lay on his cot delirious, hallucinating and on the brink of death. at this point i'm sure some of you must be asking yourself, he sort of had that coming to him, didn't he? [laughter] i mean, there he is in africa shooting these marvelous creatures, and can they fought back. good for them. i should say the first mention

that i ever heard of akeley and the first thing that made me think i might have a book idea, it was while i was in the middle of another story about extinct cats. and in my research i passed this kind of factoid in passing about the famous taxi determinist who had once strangled a leopard with his bare hands, and i thought that was amazing and, indeed, it is. [laughter] i always thought this would be a cool ad for the gap. [laughter] anyway, later on by the time carl got pole axed by the elephant, it was getting kind of hard for me not to think, well, maybe there is such a thing as karma. i also have to admit when i started writing the book that that's pretty much how i felt. after all, one of my all-time favorite quotes comes from john muir: or if war of races should

occur between the wild beasts and lord man, i would be tempted to sympathize with the bears. but let me take a moment to try and seriously explain some of his motives and how i came to love him all the more for his paradox i call nature. it's hard to spend six years working on a book unless you find the character sympathetic, and as brutal as akeley could sometimes be, i do have an enormous amount of affection for the brooding taxidermist. but at first i did not clearly understand the larger rationale for his work even if i felt like i understood what drove him as an individual artist. rather than judge him from my enlightened -- ha ha -- 21st century perch, it seemed necessary to wray as closely as -- write as closely as possible from his point of view just as it was important for me to write about all of my characters from their points of

view complete with limitations of their own thinking and the limb takes set on them -- limitations set on them by ideas and given knowledge of their era. trying to figure out my characters' motivation and by extension trying to understand the motivations of the era would end up being one of the most exciting and difficult struggles of writing the book. i was first drawn to akeley as the obsessive artist who not only risked his life over and over, but who went to such amazing and preposterous, adventurous lengths for his art. not only that, here was the man who had literally killed for his art, and i must admit it was a somewhat sinister quality that's partly to blame for my initial interest in the story. but beyond all that great dark, romantic intrigue there soon emerged this much larger and, ultimately, more important question: why?

if science knew these animals were on the extinction, which they did, did they think it was a good idea to go out and shoot a few more and put inside a museum? indeed, akeley and his bosses at the museum believed with great certainty that many of these animals were in imminent threat of extinction, and, in fact, this was why they thought it was a good idea, an imperative mission, to go kill a few for the die ram mas before it was too late. at first blush it's one of those what were they thinking kinds of questions. how exactly did the fine art of embalming equal conservation? but part of the answer was quite simply, as it turns out, a matter of available technology. in terms of capturing lifelike images of wild animals in their natural habitat, the state of

photography could not even begin to compete with the art of taxidermy which, until akeley came along and revolutionized the craft through this -- lovely. [laughter] to this. was not all that useful either. except for the most rudimentary needs of tax son mists to collect and catalog known species. quote, field photography was in its infancy. as frederick lucas, a contemporary of akeleys and directer of the american museum of natural history wasn't put it, in the stage -- as lucas put it -- when it was not so difficult to photograph a bird in the open as it was to find the bird in the photograph. at one meeting of the american ornithologists' union around this time, one member pointed with pride to a photograph of a sea gull stating that it was his

one success in 150 negatives. akeley himself had experienced similar frustration after he, too, brought a motion picture camera to africa not for the sake of making movies, per se, but as a tool to help him make better taxidermy. but the technology was not simply up to par. repeatedly, when he tried to film lions or anything more fleet-footed than hip pot maas, he lost focus. the camera he used was about as nimble as a wooden suitcase mounted to a tripod. filming a gazelle was like trying to follow a shooting star with a child' wobbly telescope. but regard rest of the technology -- and -- regardless of the technology, and i'll return to that in a moment, how was it possible to justifiably murder species that were already thought to be teetering on the brink of extinction? i mean, how was this just cause

for a sober institution like the field museum or the academy of natural sciences or any of the others? the first reason was that they believed many of these species were already doomed due to the ongoing colonization and settlement of africa. the habitat loss, the encroachment of european civilization, the sheer orgyastic killing of wildlife just as it had been in the west was enormous. akeley thought the elephants alone had a couple months -- a couple decades left at most, but here's the thing. america itself was only just waking up to a horrible truth. america, which had always been synonymous with infinite resources given the vastness of our own wilderness, was beginning to realize that maybe it was not so infinite after all.

or at least some were just now waking up to this reality. most noticeably, that -- most notably, that great american socialist president, teddy roosevelt, who had started to set aside great swaths of national wilderness under protection. t.r. was doing a very radical thing but also a very practical thing, for he was not designating national parks purely out of a love for nature which he had in great abundance. but because he'd seen the writing on the wall. america's natural resources were shrinking. not everyone saw that. most people didn't really see that. likewise, a lot of people thought it was perfectly fine to go and shoot 80 line lions or 14 mountain gorillas. the double paradox for t.r., of course, is he was, sadly, one of those men. but this awareness really only was dawning, and the idea of conservation itself, what a

great idea, was brand spanking new. but still in the face of losing all of these amazing beasts wandering the african belt, the best chance they felt they had to at least preserve the knowledge of their erstwhile existence was to preserve the images of these doomed wonders. enter carl akeley, world's greatest taxidermist. by now carl's boss, henry fairfield osborn, was comparing him in talent equal only to fiddeus, that great ancient greek sculptor who had preserved images of the gods in the parthenon. his job, in a nutshell, was to take a last snapshot of the dawn of creation in all its splendor before it was snuffed out. was this a somewhat fatalistic

philosophy? yes. was he charged, in the effect, with making time capsules of a vanishing world? this -- yes. did he love the animals he was killing? i truly think he did, yes. i know he did. but the full-scale inception of his ultimate time capsule would only come to akeley after he'd taken that beating by the elephant back on mount kenya. it was while he was confined to his tent healing from his wounds that he first began to have these feverish visions of what would become after several more harrowing expeditions and three decades. the grandiose akeley hall of african mammals. but while he lay there on his cot listening to camp sounds around him during the long days and the jungle sounds at night, he began to envision this monumental knave-like space. it engulfed his imagination. the space was dimly lit, a dark,

wide hall illuminated by a series of numerous panes of glass, each the size -- curiously enough -- of a movie screen. over those three months, the overall layout revealed itself gradually until he had imagined every last detail, carefully estimating the dimensions in his mind, picturing where he would place each charmed beast inside its lair. imagining it all down to the small earth, most exquisite blade of grass. in the center of the hall, would be a frozen herd of elephants as still as bronze statues. in a way he really had to be grateful to the elephant who had nearly squashed him like a grape. i mean without all that extra time recuperating, he very well never would have had this vision.

there we go. he also, of course, had to be immensely grateful to his wife, mickey, who had not only saved his life in a rescue effort that matched his own encounter with the elephant for sheer terrifying adventure, but who stood by him when he was back on his feet and suring from are a disabling crisis of courage. after all, once he recovered, he had to resume the elephant hunt. especially now if he was going to fulfill the dream of his epic vision. but it was at this point where he would begin to suffer lapses of morale and the gentle euphemism of the time. that is, as he went back to face the elephants, he began to suffer nervous collapses. a modern diagnosis would very likely be ptsd. i think one lesson that i definitely took away from working on this book is that the safari life is not the best thing for one's mental well

being. [laughter] both carl and mickey in different ways were certainly psychic casualties of the life style. but the center of the book, the thing that drew me the most deeply into akeley's character, was his struggle with these so-called lapses of morale which he suffered repeatedly after his clash with the elephant. the whole big, important issue of conservation aside, much of the underlying story for me was about fear. how it defines us and how much of our lives are spent trying to escape it. that common thread between fear and obsession. and this is where i think i identified with akeley the most. it is when he loses his nerve, when he starts to lose his religion. to the as -- it is at this most human part of the story, at his most vulnerable where i feel i hammered in my first p iton as a

writer. fear of the natural world dwindling, closing in and in that sense the closed boxes of the die ram mas, these finite compartments, these cramped time capsules seemed like an apt metaphor. but what was just as confining then and what continues to confine us today is this illusion of separation which we build up around ourselves, these partitions that separate us from nature. it was having that partition momentarily lifted for carl akeley that gave him his own redemption, his great epiphany while hunting mountain gorillas. curiously, he had brought along his new invention, his motion picture camera, an instrument that would revolutionize field field -- [inaudible] and i partly attribute his new sensibility, his woken

sensibilities to this new contraption which he had lugged with him all the way to the belgian congo. i feel like he must have realized he did not need to rely on his gun alone now. if akeley had not experienced this met foric melt or shatter before his eyes, the mountain gorillas would, without a had doe of a doubt, have gone extinct. if akeley had not persuading the belgians to create the first wildlife sanctuary in africa to protect the mountain gorillas, diane posse would have had nothing left to protect, sigourney weaver would never have been nominated for an academy award in "gorillas in the mist," because there would only be mist. in the end, one of the bittersweet ironies of carl akeley's story is is that by reinventing the camera and making it capable of better

preserving images, he contributed to the demise of his own beloved art form. we should count ourselves lucky. the animals should count themselves lucky that we really don't need die o ram mas because we have incredible shows to see what we otherwise would not see. but i do also sincerely feel if with a grain of salt that when we go to see them in new york or chicago or here in philadelphia, we cannot help but feel deeply affected. for me the experience of standing many front of one of the die ram mas and looking in at these animals forever frozen in time, each scene hermetically sealed for eternity, always gives me a sense of what akeley himself must have felt when he had his own moment with the gorillas. when he was standing there -- when you're standing there, you're not at all aware of the glass.

you feel as though you can walk right into the scenery. the effect is like nothing else. and ultimately, these are works of art, and i say that because these die ram mas continue to do the job of what art is supposed to accomplish. to make us see the world more clearly and with compassion. thank you very much. [applause] >> yes, i will take questions. i might scoot over here. >> we just ask if of a question, please, explicitly use this microphone for the c-span audience. thank you.

>> thank you. [laughter] oh, okay. >> nice try. >> yes, sir. hi, john. >> before i get into any questions, i need to thank you with all my heart. on behalf of every taxidermist in the world, thank you for writing this book. [applause] finish. >> thank you. [laughter] thanks for teaching me about taxidermy. >> of all the fears that we know of that you recorded in the book that akeley experienced, what do you think was his most underlying fear while back in new york city? >> fear of failure. not getting it right, of not

getting the money to do what he wanted to do. but, i mean, this man was so driven by work and perfectionism that i think -- >> that's a great answer and it brings me to just one more question. i can understand a modern taxidermist being attracted to the life of carl akeley. his sense of adventure and accomplishment. but basically, man, you're not an outdoor guy. what in your life actually attracted you to the persona of akeley himself? >> well, he -- i i think it was a morbid attraction at fist. at first. i liked the idea that he was an artist who literally killed his own subjects. [laughter] just to be quite honest, that kind of grabbed my attention. he strangled a leopard with his bare hands, that caught my attention too, you know? so, i mean, the things at first

were the very compelling maybe pegs of this story, sort of hard to believe parts of his story. but i quickly found that he embodied so many other things. i mean, he embodied that time and the birth of the conservation movement and this great awakening where, you know, they did not realize like, oh, maybe we could spend more time trying to save the animals rather than kill them. and there was this illusion that wilderness was infinite. >> thanks a lot, jay, appreciate it. >> thank you. [applause] >> hey, jay. that was a really great talk. >> thank you. >> i thought you did a great job of sort of teasing out some of the contradictions there and kind of exploring them. just a quick question. i'm wondering if you're familiar

with donna haraway's work? >> absolutely, yes. >> it's called -- >> [inaudible] >> right? and she really takes up the question of some of the things you touched on of race, class, sex, the colonial aspects and if you, you mention a few things about maybe the -- a lot of primetologists tend to be women or at least famous ones, but if you had any thought about her reading of this story, of this character. and then secondly, i don't know why it just kind of comes to mind since you were mentioning murderer and, of course, the fact you're interested in crime writing, right? the famous line, we murder to dissect. but this seems not quite that. it seems perhaps some people want to kill to reconstruct or to represent or to, in this case maybe even domesticate where you take the living being and bring it into the interior of the

museum or the house or something. so anyway, two quick thoughts. >> well, i can say right offhand i'm familiar with donna haraway, and i loved reading her work. she's very high academic theorist, and she kind of put her focus on the natural history museums and looking at some of the social theory aspects of it. all of which i found to be completely valid points of view, and i think the only thing i could say to that was that i was -- and probably by reading people like her -- made me keenly aware, you know, of these obvious, major discrepancies in the racial issues of carl akeley being, you know, the white safari hunter leading, you know, all these kind of invisible porters behind him. and i felt somewhat conflicted about that, how to acknowledge that.

i feel in the book i did try to acknowledge it in different ways and certainly my tendency is to write more about the scene, so i included a number of scenes talking about the actual clashes that were taking place which akeley, curiously enough, was always just skirting like the most kind of awful wars between the, you know, european settlers and the african natives. there's a lot of food for thought there. i hope i adequately answered your question. >> thanks for the great talk. i don't know if you looked into this at all, but i was wondering if you could talk at all about the parallels between the rise of modern taxidermy and what was going on with the development of zoos at that point in time as a way to keep live, you know, keep domesticated, live types of animals.

>> it goes hand in hand a little bit. many of the trustees of the national museum of history including roosevelt, j.p. morgan and some of their friends were actually very involved in the establishment of the bronx zoo. at the same time, they were trustees who were putting their money into these, you know, the dioramas. so some of the same people had the same interests at the time. i think they had a somewhat more bucolic image of what the zoo might be and what it might provide to urban dwellers than it ultimately ended up being, you know? but that might be just my revisionist looking back and thinking, oh, the zoos are awful and now our zoos are nicer, but what's a good zoo anyway? [laughter] not my thing. but, yes, there were definite, definite parallels. another parallel to jump to like some of these same people at the museum who, again, were trus's

of the bronx -- trustees of the bronx zoo felt that it would serve a purpose to people living in many new york and these cities that were suddenly just so much bigger, you know? and they thought it was very important. they valued nature. they valued people having access to nature and wilderness, that that would help put off or assuage some of the anxieties of what they would call overcivilization. >> i thought my question was stolen, but i think it's a tack on. your book's a 2010 book, it's a modern book. i mean, published now. and i can't help but think about your own discussion and think about the zoo as it's conceived today as being these archives of dna. and i was wondering if in the any way your shaping of this book and thinking about it being a 2010 book thinking even about

zoos in their present mission to preserve of how that may have informed your thinking about the past. >> i think i don't entirely understand the question. >> oh, okay. i was just thinking zoos today are so much about preserving life that's going, right? the condors and so forth. >> yeah, rescue. >> rescue, and so much of what you're describing sounds so much like -- >> oh, the fatalism? >> yeah, the fatalism of today and the way zoos are thought about today, and i was wondering if in any way in your writing that came into it. >> well, enough said. i think it's all very fatalistic. but, i mean, obviously, we, you know, our society reaches points where we feel completely fatalistic about things, like now it's global warming, you know? but some people aren't totally fatalistic about it. you know, a breakthrough will happen. optimism happens. you know, we can deal with this.

i think the interesting thing about akeley and the people at the museum of the time and the great ironny, i mean, that was -- and this answers somebody else's question, too, like what really drew my attention. yes, at first it was kind of the morbid artist thing, that was cool, but just the paradoxical nature of the times and of the scientists, it was just amazing to me, you know, that here's a point where they felt like this is the best we can do. we can -- we know that these species are going to die, the best we can do is is to preserve an example, a data point for us to have in the future to see what we've lost. it's very fatalistic. but then i think that's what makes akeley's story so wonderful, is is that he breaks through that. he has a redmtion. he sees it's possible, hey,

let's save the mountain gorillas. that's what makes this book, his story, ultimately optimistic, i think. >> hi, jay. >> hello. >> the part of the story that you were speaking that i just found fascinating was the little bit you mentioned about his wife, mickey. how much do we know about mickey? i mean, her story -- she's bagging elephants, ministering to her husband in a tent, you know, bringing him back from the brink of death. her story sounds fascinating, and i've never heard of her, and i'm wondering how much fame does she have? is she simply in his shadow? did she have fame as a taxidermist as well? >> that's a great question. i definitely sort of focused mainly on carl in my lecture tonight, but the book is definitely about carl and mickey. i see it as a romance. her story was amazing, yeah.

it's phenomenal to me that a book has not been written about her before, like a full treatment. and not to go on too long or give a spoiler, you know, but she ended up after -- on her own crossing africa. he was the first female explorer to cross africa on her own working for the brooklyn museum in the late '20s. but, yeah, she's, she's just as much a part of the story as carl is. >> [inaudible] >> this is, the movie footage that i'm using here is actually connected to the akeleys. it's osa and martin johnson, and they were kind of just this really glitzy, amazing movie-maker couple at the time, you know, at first they were going off to borneo. they did a lot of, like, savage movies. movies called the congarilla and

wild savages, stuff like that. [laughter] but they decided finish they became friends with akeley. they were a bit younger than him, and he convinced them to go to africa and film. and they went over there, and they moved there for nearly a decade making these movies, and they had kind of an interesting symbiotic relationship where the movies that they were making -- this movie's called simba. and some of the -- the american museum of natural history gave it its respectful -- [inaudible] which gave them a little more, you know, respectability which i guess they felt they didn't have. they had the box office, but they didn't have the scientific credibility, so they formed this relationship with akeley and the american museum of natural history, and the profits, 50% of the profits from that was

supposed to go to fund akeley's african hall. so he was actually with them. some of the footage of his, some of the lion footage is his, but they had a whole fleet of akeley's cameras he reinvented. >> jay, i just want to say i really enjoyed reading the book. it was a great lecture tonight. so my question is about working with akeley's papers. i mean, you spent six years researching, you worked intensely with his papers, with his memorabilia, so what was that like? what were akeley's letters and diaries like, and also what did he think about his wife's monkey? [laughter] >> i don't want to talk about the monkey. [laughter] that would be a spoiler. [laughter] he's a weird monkey. [laughter]

i was very -- it was very tiring, you know? it was very tiring, six years. [laughter] i love that kind of research, you know? i spend many, i mean, i practically moved in to the archives of the explorers' club where he had been president for a few years and the american museum of natural history, the library there people were just incred my helpful. and it's just, i mean, it's phenomenal how much they actually have, you know? you know, they wheel this cart out. they have, like, 50 archive boxes that are just crammed full of correspondence, invitations. the photographic archives were phenomenal, you know? in that way it's like, okay, i was not there, but i could look at these photographs -- they took thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures, they made

movies, akeley made movies -- some not as good as others -- but it was a great, you know, source to reconstruct scenes from and see what it really looked like. and i read their diaries. i used all of the primary documents that somebody would use in a history book or a biography. i probably had the one, you know, difference or blessed difference, that i was able to not -- i didn't have to include everything if i didn't want to, so i just kind of kept the things that were interesting. like, for instance, akeley had a couple of patents for dentistry equipment, you know? [laughter] but reading the correspondence and also in ro rochester, becaue he grew up near rochester at the university of rochester, i read a lot of archives there and found a lot of personal correspondence that enabled me to just kind of get into his head really, you know?

he comes across very humorless sometimes, but other times he's hysterical. he's just like, he's really funny. i wish mickey had written more. i mean, the two books that she wrote, "jungle portraits," and her second one was called "j.t. jr., biography of an african monkey." [laughter] really good book. long out of print. i wish she'd written more. yeah. >> so -- [inaudible] that story of choking the leopard, you talk about trying to look at it from his point of view and looking at it from the time. to me, that screams of moral ambiguity, and can that fascinates me. so the question that i have for you is kind of a three-part question. how important is moral

objectivity in writing nonfiction? have you ever come across somebody in your writing that has, you haven't really been able to not sympathize with because of their actions? and with this guy, has he -- did he do anything that you personally, maybe this isn't in the book, that you personally can't justify for yourself in your looking at this guy? >> akeley did many things that i found reprehensible. absolutely. but, again, you know, the thing that i was drawn to, that i found most compelling in terms of him being a character was that he was very paradoxical, you know? so, yes. he, you know, he was engaged in this enterprise that at facial

was very brutal. like go kill these animals and bring them back and mount them. i mean, i guess that could be morally reprehensible. but at the same time, i mean, as i said, my objective was to try and see it from their point of view to see what was going on. but, you know, he wasn't the only -- there were definitely characters in the book that i found through my research that were morally ambivalent past the point of ambivalence. they were just jerks. [laughter] and i didn't want to write about them. >> [inaudible] >> sure, yeah. [applause] >> jay kirk is a creative writing teacher at the university of pennsylvania. for more information visit his

web site, jaykirk. info. >> brad metser, why a, nonfiction? this. >> well, the truth was, is it's for my son, and eight years ago on the night my son was born iig said, i'm going to write a booki that lasts his whole life.o and i was coming back from thee hospital, and it's. that great moment when you can dreamme anything for your child.dre your child can be anything, can be the president, can be a nicec person, can be a generousous person, and with all that idealism i said, i'm going to write a book that lasts his whole life.te and i came home and startedm writing a book that was rules for him to live by. there you go, pictures of it. i and what i wanted was, one, love god.e two, be nice to the fat kid in class. things i felt important for himm to know, but the truth was it knew nothing about being ahing father.out i knewb nothing. so a friend of mine then told me this amazing story about the wright brothers, and every time they would go out to fly their plane, they'd bring enoughme

material for multiple crashes which means every time they went out, they knew they would fail, and they would crash and rebuild and crash and rebuild, and that's why they took off. i said, i love that story. i want my son to hear that story, my daughter, i want them to know if they have a dream anr work hard, they can do anythinge and i said, that's the book i'm going to write, not a book of rules, but a book of heros. 50 heros from rosa parks to mr. rogers to jim henson, all showing what we're capable of. >> who is barbara johns? this. >> barbara johns is a teenager, and i wanted the book to have famous people. it has someone like martin luther king jr. or abraham lincoln, but i wanted to have regular people, and barbara johns was a high school studentl and almost an unwitting civilw right activist. what happened was barbara johns, at a time when in 1951, basically, saw a school bus ride by her, and her school bus was

broken down, and they saw another bus ride by that washe full of the white kids that were going to the good schools, herhe school was a horrible school, and she organized a walkout. she said, you know, we're going to protest it.w we're going to say, forget aboue it. shei is one of the unknown people, and her test case as they walked out was one of the cases used in brown v. board ofc education. and where did it come from? a teenager.e a teenager is one of the people who's responsible for it. so the week is is filled with -k there's a guy named frank, and he's a police officer. and he found out about a boys with leukemia who also wanted to be a police officer, so he had a little motorcycle uniform made for the boy, and frank finds out that the boy with leukemia goes into a coma. so this police officer goes to the boy's hospital room, and and he says to the boy, he puts -- as the boy's unconscious, he says to the boy, i want to put little motorcycle wings on him, so he tells the story, and he

pins little motorcycle wings on the boy's chest at which point -- true story -- the boyb wakes up out of his coma and smiles.e the boy eventually goes backe into a coma, eventually dies, but on the way home from the funeral, frank looks at hisk buddy and says, you know, wehi made that kid really happy for just one day, we should do that for other kids.we and that's how the make a wish. foundation was born.e i said, i never knew that storyn i want my son to know thato story, and that's what it's really about, celebrating these people that can just take oneh dream and share with someone else and change the entire world. >> we've only got a few minutesi with our author, brad meltzer, and we'd like to hear who you would recommend. go ahead and start calling ina now. who is on the cover here?over >> you know, it's funny. everyone thinks it's my son.h i have two sons. my publisher wanted me to picka between my kids. i'm not that stupid.

so that's actually my very goodo friend rust key and elizabeth,ie it's their dear son. we kept it a family affair. the last hero in the book my favorite hero in the whole book, it's my mother. and my mom died two years ago from breast cancer. >> carrie meltster.e and and before she died, my publisher was shutting down, and i didn't know if anyone would take over my contract.n i was terrified that these were my last moments of watching my career.y and i called my mom, and i saidn mom, i'm so nervous about this, and she said to me, i'd love you if you were a garbage man. and she wasn't taking a crack, my uncle was a forward ban man,. but to this day i say those words to myself, i'd love you if you were a garbage man. the last two pages are blank, and they say your hero's photo here and your hero's story here. and i promise you, you take this book, you give it this holiday

season and put their picture ina there and write one sentence about your father, awr grandfather, a military memberr of your family, about what theyn mean to you, that will be the most beautiful page in heros fom my son.ul and i wanted it to be something you could give to someone at anv age and say thank you for being. my hero.u >> you've included twoonte contemporary u.s. presidents. >> nobody's in it for pretty reasons. i included george h.w. bush and barack obama but, again, not for political reasons. bush is in there because of thiu amazing story of when he was flying. heaz was one of the youngesth pilots in world war ii, and there's the picture of him. he had two men on the plane with him he was flying with, and as the plane crashes and is crashing into the ocean, he' maneuvers the plane so they can get out before he can. and uses that moment of selflessness. rather than saving himselfmo first, he lets them out fist, he jumps out and isu crashing in te ocean. he's vomiting, he's crying, believe me, he's terrified.

and when i saw him and i heard this story, he told me he still thinks of these guys all theof time. g and here's the guy who becameld president of the united statest and never ran for it, never self-promoting, i want my son ty have that humility.h and barack obama's not in the book for political reasons, but i will say this, what he represents -- whatever your politics are -- is one of thes great e ideals in america, and t that is that anyone can beo president. i want my son to know anyone can be president.r so they were both put in there for nonpolitical reasons. >> how did you get to know george h.w. bush?e >> that was, i got -- i write thrillers and mysteries for a living. one day i got a letter from ari real person who said i like you. books a lot, and it was a fan letter, but it was george h.w. bush. you're the former president and you write me a letter, i'll send you a book. so i sent him a free book, andid he's been a really good friend.

>> brad meltzer is our guest. first call onk. heros, maryland. go ahead, please. a >> caller: yes, brad. i wanted to thank you ford creating such a wonderful book. i think it's extremely important that people really understand that, you know, heros are not just the people that are famous, but i like that you did put in people who are not famous, and a kid would have an opportunity -- not only your son, but anyone who's giving this gift to theirh family -- to let them know that ordinary people not only can do extraordinary things, but alsoir be truly extraordinary by pursuing their goals and dreams and really going after it andng can trying to make a difference. so i want to thank you for thish and for giving me something is can share with my family. >> host: now, who's your hero? >> caller: my hero would be mysh mother. she was a african-american woman from south, had a ninth grade education, -- raised my brotherf

and i, he trades on wall street, and i have my master's degree. >> guest: you're exactly right. >> host: allers. right.st >> guest: and that's exactly right.tlgh and, you know, the thing is wea all know and say, oh, our heros are george washington, martin luther king jr., these amazinge people, but the real heros aree the people we live with every day. you want to talk about the herod who i spend my time with is my son, my oldest son jonas, and this is the moment i recently gave him the book.that and it's the moment i've waitedi eight years for, right? this is it, i'm presenting it to him, and he doesn't care about eleanor roosevelt. he doesn't care about rosa parks. he goes looking for the athletes inle the book, and he's flipping through, and he finds a picturee of roberto clemente. i tell my son all the time, you know what? you know what being a famous

athlete means?kn this nothing.a doesn't make your a better person -- don't make you an better person. you know what being on the bestseller list means?s nothing.th doesn't make me smarter orit nicer. roberto's in the book not because he played baseball ford the pittsburgh pirates, he's in there because there was an earthquake in nicaragua, and hee sentc three planeloads of food and medicine. all three were confiscated. so he sent a fourth, and he said, i'm so determined to make sure it gets there, i'm going t put myself on it. he's not a hero because he diedr he's a hero because why he got onboard. and so my son's reading this, and i'm waiting for him to be sa inspired that he tells me i'm the greatest father on earth, but he looks up at me and says,r dad, this is sad. and i realize i've broken his

heart for the first time. so the next day i think, oh, my gosh, the book has backfired. he comes racing into the room on his own and grabs the book by himself and says, dad, who ared rereading tonight? this i said, what about roberto clemente?o this he said, i like him. we all complain about there's no goodh heros in the world, we focus on athletes, we focus on celebrities. we have a say in who our kidshle emulate, and i wanted this to be my say.o >> host: hope town, florida, you've got about 15 seconds. gote ahead, hi. >> caller: thank you very much.a my hero is a man named -- [inaudible] fry. this was a man from an all-white protestant family who went to marseilles and saved, basically, the intellectual class of europe from the nazis. mark shah gal and so many others